NewsRescue
Tara Reade, a newly formed network of human rights activists, told RT on Thursday that an online conference was held in support of imprisoned Wikileaks editor Julian Assange and other victims of political or religious persecution.
The video conference, which featured more than 15 speakers from around the world, was organized by the nonprofit Re:Union from a hub in Serbia. One of the dissidents asked to speak at the meeting was Reade, a former US Senate staffer who sought asylum in Russia last month.
The conference cited Assange as an example of the West infringing on the right to free expression. The Wikileaks editor has been jailed in a maximum-security British prison since April 2019, when Ecuador revoked his refuge and the United States reopened Espionage Act charges against him, which could land him in prison for 175 years if he is convicted. Assange has defended his disclosure of US military secrets relating to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010 as “basic journalism.”
Reade told RT that she had been called to testify about her own persecution in the United States. She accused current US President Joe Biden of sexual assault when she was his Senate staffer, and she has called the present Ukraine crisis a “US-NATO proxy war against Russia.”
She also emphasized that the Ukrainian government, hailed by the US and its allies as a champion of democracy, has effectively banned over a dozen opposition groups and all opposition media, while persecuting the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Reade mentioned a recent FBI whistleblower’s testimony regarding how the US government has targeted traditional Catholics as dangerous “extremists” at home. She described her arrival in Russia as “the first time I felt safe in so long.”
The video conference was planned by Re:Union to present some of the speakers and to set the way for the upcoming ‘Free European Nations Forum.’
